A brother’s advice not enough to save Damian

BEFORE he died, Damian Meehan phoned his firefighter brother, Eugene, for a bit of advice.

He was in a burning building, the fire was below him and it was a long way down to get out. Eugene told him not to panic, to check out the stairwells and to make his exit as fast as he could.

Below him was a towering inferno, above him a sealed-off roof. Only a miracle could have saved Damian.

Mike Meehan, an NYPD officer, says when American Airlines Flight 11 sucked the life from the upper layers of 1 World Trade Centre (WTC), he thought his younger brother was on a floor below. In with a chance.

"I didn't even know he was on the 92nd floor, I thought he was down lower. I thought he might be OK."

Not so. His brother is one of 2,819 confirmed casualties of September 11.

Damian, 33, worked in the north tower of the Twin Towers since 1993, just months after the first attack on the WTC ripped its below-ground basement apart.

His job was that of financial adviser to Carr Futures, a financial trading service, a desk job, to compliment the more physical firefighting jobs of brothers Kevin and Eugene and police officer Mike.

He let off steam on the GAA pitch instead, shining from a early age, with his 'Good Shepherd' parish team, in Inwood, Manhattan and with the NY Donegal team, his parents' home county. His father, Mike snr, is from Donegal town, his mother Peg from nearby Drimarone. It was Mike snr that passed onto his sons his passion for Gaelic football.

"Damian loved Gaelic football, he played right through from Under-10s up to Under-21s and he had medals for them all. He had a junior medal and a senior medal was in the palm of his hand until Leitrim scored a goal with the last kick of the game and robbed him," said Mike.

For Damian, the final whistle blew on September 11, after his building collapsed. Mike was close by.

"I got down there around 11am, after the two buildings had come down. I was trying to see if I could find anyone alive. After an hour-and-a-half, I got separated from the guys I had gone down with.

"Then I called my family and found out that Damian hadn't called. That was so unlike him. I was very concerned at that stageHe hadn't phoned his wife Joann either."

Mike says it was obvious from Damian's last phone call to Eugene that he knew what had happened. "There was heavy smoke on his floor but he wasn't in a panic, just wondering how best to get out.

"But that one phone call, that was it. They were all up there helping each other, but the talk is that they were all trapped from 92 up. We'll never know."

Damian's body was found intact on Monday October 1, in a stairwell, with dozens of firemen, an answer to his parents' daily prayers to return to them their son . "He was on his way down," said Mike, "he was found with his good friend Denis McHugh."

He had many good friends. At a funeral mass at Good Shepherd on October 8, thousands turned up to pay their respects; so many that local restaurants brought food to those waiting outside. Further memorials are planned for the man with "the big smile, the big laugh" his brother's words.

Cpt Paul McCormack, from Ballybofey, Co Donegal, played Gaelic with Damian at the Good Shepherd Club. "He was a good footballer, a good guy," said Paul.

Paul, the youngest of the NYPD's high-ranking officers, has his own memories of the day Damian died. And the many long days and nights that followed.

He headed up the bucket brigade at Ground Zero, the lines of cops, firefighters and volunteers that spent weeks shifting debris in the hope of finding life.

"It was chaos for the first few days, no one had any experience in this type of thing, we were just winging it.

"On the bucket brigade, rank didn't matter, people just listened for signs of life. If any sound was heard, everyone would go quiet and then the frantic digging would begin, thousands of buckets going along the line. But there were no survivors after the first few days."

Hard to deal with for Paul were the phone calls from people who knew he was a cop and were desperate for details of loved ones. "It was one of the worst things. The families ringing, frantic and you had nothing to tell them.

"Sean Patrick Tallon's wife [a 26-year-old firefighter whose family came from Co Clare] rang me. What could I say? You couldn't tell them that under all that rubble, there'd be few survivors."

Very few and not Damian.

Mike Meehan jnr wishes he could have his brother back. "He was so happy-go-lucky, very family orientated, a fun guy to be with. Myself, himself and our brothers used to get together for golf every year and have such a laugh. He was such a good guy. It's incredible to think that someone like that could have been taken away from us."

These days his family rely on each other to cope with their cruel loss. Mike jnr says his father Mike and mother Peg find it very tough. "There are constant reminders, everywhere they turn." His six brothers and two sisters also have their moments. "Thank God we have a big family, we have each other and that helps. We also have a lot of friends helping us out all the time."

Joann McCarthy, Damian's wife, widowed in under three years, plans to move from the home she and Damian made together in Glen Rock, New Jersey to be closer to his family. The daughter of emigrants from Dingle, Joannin Kerry, met Damian at Lehman College, near his home, and it was love at first sight. They married in June 1998 in the Bronx and had spent the weekend before September 11 together, just the two of them, at Spring Lake, on the Jersey shore.

"It's not easy for her. Who expects their husband to go to work and never come home again?" asks Mike.

A son, Damian Peter Meehan Jnr, born on 23 January 2000 is some comfort. He knew his father briefly.

One person never will. Her name is Madison Margaret Meehan and she came into this world too late to meet her Dad.